The Geography Blog focusing on all things geography: human, physical, technical, space, news, and geopolitics. Also known as Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!
Written by a former National Geographic employee who also proudly served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

School Raitings for 4th and 8th Grade Math and Reading Scores

This weekend I saw Waiting for Superman and was depressed by it. The effect cultural decline and failing schools have had on the United States is sad. What it especially sad for many families is their inability to compare their schools with others and hopefully find a way out, either public or private, for their children.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up with others to create the Education Nation Scorecard for Schools website. The website allows one to search for schools across the United States and compare the searched school with other schools, both public and private. Data is given for the school, other schools in the state, and the United States versus other developed countries. Reading and math scores for fourth and eighth grade are given as well as graduation rates.

Only 14% of DC eighth graders read at an eighth grade level. But then again "high preforming" states like Massachusetts are under 50% reading at their grade level.

The results are saddening. The nation's capital, Washington D.C., is a blight on the country. Only 14% of all eighth graders read at an eighth grade level and only 56% of Washingtonian kids will graduate high school (Nevada is worse with 51% graduating). Then again, even "high scoring" states are under 50%.

This tool is useful for those looking to move to a new town. Use this website to scope out the neighborhoods you are interested in moving to and see if your child(ren) will be going to a truly high preforming school.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I am a teacher and I think it is unfortunate you took the Waiting for Superman movie at face value. Public schools are not all that they should be, but not for the reasons or by the measures presented in the movie. After all, it was a movie.

Anonymous, I am the proud product of a great public school with excellent unionized teachers. There are some branches of the unions that do go way too far when it comes to protecting bad teachers. If I may ask, what is your opinion on why U.S. schools have not improved overall performance despite a monumental rise in funding for education?

P.S. I also relize the impact of stupid culture (thinking education is dumb, or it is selling out, or parents not careing) when it comes to the failure of the current generation.

In short, I think schools are suffering because we have moved away from a Liberal Arts education. In regards to critiques of the reform movement represented by the movie Waiting for Superman, I will defer to the thoughts of Diane Ravitch. I think that the primary influence on a student is the family. The teacher is the biggest in school influence, but they can never take the place of or have the same impact as a parent. Finally, I think a lot of the funding is wasted on bureaucratic items and unnecessary administrative jobs, both of which are not the fault of the teacher. The teachers are just low hanging fruit, pardon the cliche, and easy to pick.